Klaus Kinkel

Klaus Kinkel (17 December 1936-4 March 2019) was Foreign Minister of Germany from 29 April 1992 to 26 October 1998 (succeeding Hans-Dietrich Genscher and preceding Joschka Fischer) and Vice-Chancellor from 21 January 1993 to 26 October 1998 (succeeding Jurgen Mollemann and preceding Fischer). He was a member of the FDP.

Biography
Klaus Kinkel was born in Metzingen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Nazi Germany in 1936 to a Catholic family. He began to work for the Ministry of the Interior in 1965 and served as President of the Federal Intelligence Service from 1979 to 1982 and as Minister of Justice from 1991 to 1992, serving as an FDP member. From 1992 to 1998, he served as Foreign Minister; concurrently, he served as Vice-Chancellor from 1993 to 1998. He supported an end to the atrocities of the Yugoslav Wars and proposed the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY); he also supported intervention in the Somali Civil War in what would be the largest deployment of German soldiers since World War II. Kinkel was also a strong supporter of the European Union, successfully advocating for the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. From 1994 to 2002, he served in the Bundestag, and he retired in 2002. He went on to work as a lawyer, philanthropist, and businessman, and he died in 2019.